NASA: Industrial civilization headed for ‘irreversible collapse’

[YankeyMCC]

Hopelessness: These factors can lead to collapse when they converge to generate two crucial social features: “the stretching of resources due to the strain placed on the ecological carrying capacity”; and “the economic stratification of society into Elites [rich] and Masses (or “Commoners”) [poor]” These social phenomena have played “a central role in the character or in the process of the collapse,” in all such cases over “the last five thousand years.”

Hope: “Collapse can be avoided and population can reach equilibrium if the per capita rate of depletion of nature is reduced to a sustainable level, and if resources are distributed in a reasonably equitable fashion.”

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/03/14/nasa-industrial-civilization-headed-for-irreversible-collapse/

[roamer65]

1. I wonder how soon "Elysium" will be in orbit.

[NBachers]

13. A colony of rats, scabies, and bedbugs deserve saving too, don't you think?

I'm sure they'd be happy to share Elysium with their human counterparts.

[warrior1]

2. Zero population growth

[truebluegreen]

7. Unfortunately, we need a massive reduction in population

and that is unlikely to be voluntary or pretty.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

15. truth.

Infinitely fertile, invasive species on a finite planet.....

[Nuclear Unicorn]

21. Small dogs are useless eaters.

Just sayin'

[GliderGuider]

23. But they can make useful eating...

[BlancheSplanchnik]

38. I'm going to watch Hannibal now.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

36. as one who planned long ago never to add to the human numbers,

She is my reward. And treasure.

We non-breeders should get a tax rebate too. Incentive for more people to do something good for the planet would be a good thing.

On an environmental site, I once read: what's the one best thing anyone can do for the planet? Don't breed.


(I can't tell if you're chuckling convivially or being a snark.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

44. But you did breed. You bred a creature that serves no practical purpose.

And consider all of the resources required to keep it alive and healthy. It eats. It requires medical care. It needs to be housed and warmed. You even dress it in ridiculous costumes, which is a whole other logistical chain.

Will it ever pay taxes? Will it cure a disease? Will it ever produce more than it consumes? Nope.

It serves one purpose and one purpose only: your gratuitous emotional projections. And yet, somehow, you imagine you deserve it as a reward (Show me the Holy Writ that says as much) while other people have children that go on to contribute in many positive ways to our world with far fewer demands of entitlement.

And, in case you're wondering: No, my husband and I do not have children, nor are we planning any.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

47. i wasn't wondering, but glad to hear that. I commend you.

As for everything else you said---yeah. I can't deny it.

Whenever I take her anywhere, though, people want to pat her and hold her. She's made a lot of people smile. I've had more than one mentally handicapped person enthralled with her.

So there's that. And I love her. Which doesn't remove any of the repercussions you listed.

Yep, though....you nailed the problem of too many people: everything anyone does affects the whole. With so many of us, there's a point where no amount of sustainability will ameliorate our impacts.

[YarnAddict]

24. War and death due to lack of health insurance

would be good things, in that case.

So, why are we against them?

[truebluegreen]

30. Inequity. Next question?

[YarnAddict]

40. There will be no equity

The wealthy and powerful will always survive. There is no solution that will be equitable.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

37. reward incentives for not adding to the population

Should have been thought of long ago.

Instead, population reduction's going to happen anyway---but in very unpleasant ways.

[YarnAddict]

39. It won't work.

Positive incentives won't work, no matter what. Negative incentives might be of limited effectiveness, although there is a downside to that. (See China.)

[BlancheSplanchnik]

41. hrmmm......

Really? It's that hopeless? (Serious question--I'm not snarking. I never understood the desire to have kids....the catastrophe of too many people was obvious to me way back when I was a kid myself.)

[YarnAddict]

42. Yes, I think it is that hopeless

And just because you have no desire to have kids, doesn't mean that the majority of people share it.

Considering that major religions encourage uncontrolled breeding, you will never convince a large percentage of the world population to limit reproduction. Considering that medical science has eliminated some of the pestilence that allowed nature to control population, and at the same time has prolonged lifespans by decades, there will come a catastrophic tipping point.

So--probably there will be population control--by nuclear war, probably.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

45. so true.....

You're right about extended lifespans and medical advances. ...and about the many religions commanding procreation......


True too that my perspective isn't shared by the majority.
I can never understand that.

[Countdown_3_2_1]

26. Not going to happen in a free society.

Only China has been able to do anything like this and only with draconian laws and brutal tactics.

A better bet is to start a colony on Mars. Move out to space and open homes for the masses.
>> Humanity was meant to expand and colonize new frontiers, not stagnate in one place. Heck, I support undersea colonies.

I really cannot see people accepting the China policy by choice. The poorest peoples on earth see children as their only hope for care in their old age-they won't stop breeding. Neither will people used to freedom (like in the industrial world). Christians, Jews, and Muslims will all reject this. You're fighting against human nature.

Apart from China's one child laws, how would anyone "reduce" the population? Withhold medicine to the sick? Release a genetically modified virus? Bloody purges?
Now we are stepping into a world of genocidal crimes. Who wants to be a part of that?

[truebluegreen]

29. I didn't say a word about policy, in a free society or out of it.

I think it has already gotten to the point where it is out of anyone's hands. Unless we include Mother Nature.

But fyi, the best method for controlling the population? Educating and empowering women. Iran--not a free society I grant you--after the revolution in '79 was promptly attacked by Iraq (can't imagine who might have encouraged that behavior ). The ayatollah encouraged all patriotic women to get pregnant and give birth to a big new army for the future.

But the war ended and they realized that they had a problem: a whole bunch of young men growing up--the demographic most likely to cause civil unrest--without an economy to support them. Check out what happened in Romania about 20 years after Ceausescu criminalized abortion (1967) and starting insisting women bear at least 4 children. Check out also the origins and aims of the GI Bill after WWII: giving all those returning men something to do before they simply flooded the labor markets.

Iran's rulers understood that they had to put the brakes on, and they did it by educating women on what it takes to feed, clothe and raise children; by providing (not mandating) free birth control; they "suggested" that two children were enough, by providing state assistance for two children, but not for more than two.... Iran has achieved a steady-state population without draconian measures that need to be enforced.

But of course, nothing is forever and now they are trying to reverse the trend: encouraging women to stay home and have more children etc. Who knows if it will work, but apparently delusions about unlimited resources are not confined to the United States.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

48. +++.

Remind me to google those points you mentioned. Please! Too interesting to forget to check.

[Skip Intro]

46. How would an involuntary reduction of the population play out? n/t

[enough]

9. Which means people actually not having children. And since children are the

holy grail and individual-defining factor in our society, this seems highly unlikely. People who choose not to have children are still stigmatized here, and probably elsewhere.

[Turbineguy]

3. We can't do "sustainable"

Apparently God doesn't like it.

[Zorra]

4. When the last tree is cut, the last fish is caught, and the last river is polluted;

when to breathe the air is sickening, you will realize, too late, that wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can’t eat money.
~ Alanis Obamsawin, Odanak Abenaki People

[AverageJoe90]

5. I'll just re-post what I wrote on the other thread: This isn't needed, or helpful.

If this is what NASA's putting out these days.....I fear for their future.(Thanks GOP!)

THIS, ladies and gentlemen, is just one more reason why NASA needs better funding.....so they can have a better focus on actually building stuff to get us back into space, and not have to rely on poorly-thought out and excessively attention grabbing stuff like this.

Honestly, this whole study is flawed to a T. No joke. Just the fact that they tried to take the circumstances of ancient Mesopotamia & Rome and apply that to the *modern civilization as a whole*, which is *vastly* different in so many ways is already enough for that.....it's apples and oranges in fact.

This is disappointing in a lot of ways, really. NASA got us to the moon, for Pete's sakes! And now they're a shell of their former self.
But I don't blame them. No, I believe the fault lies squarely with the Republican Party; they're the morons who started this slash-and-burn type Reaganite nonsense in the first place.

And I stand by what I said. Because you know something? This really is a symptom of how far NASA's gone now. We *need* to give them more resources and better funding. And if that means we'll have to take back the House in this year's elections.....then let it be done. But, I for one, am *tired* of this outright Chicken Little stuff no matter how well intentioned some of it may be.

[Demeter]

6. There are many fads that pass for "science" in this anti-intellectual country

but the worse ones pass for "economics" and "medicine".

There's too much spin, too little rigor, and absolutely no desire to guide policy based on the well-known principles, let alone every last movement that captures the imagination or fear of the public.

[AverageJoe90]

8. Agreed.

TBH, I really don't blame NASA for the overall predicament. It's the Republicans who defunded them for poorly thought-out military adventures and undeserved extra benefits for the .1%.

[former9thward]

10. Happened long before Reagan.

NASA's highest budget was in 1966 both measured in 2007 dollars and as a percentage of the federal budget. It has gone down ever since.

http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2010/feb/01/nasa-budgets-us-spending-space-travel#data

https://www.google.com/search?q=nasa+budget+history&rlz=1C1EODA_enUS544US544&espv=210&es_sm=93&tbm=isch&imgil=48JjPfMZP-1NCM%253A%253Bhttps%253A%252F%252Fencrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com%252Fimages%253Fq%253Dtbn%253AANd9GcRAC13bMm7uuRaWvyOUNh8P8rPuJaedm-tjSIRnNGz8PF2tvhK-%253B1406%253B936%253BizymKcIBw7wtqM%253Bhttp%25253A%25252F%25252F%3B641%3B417

[Demo_Chris]

11. I agree. This nonsense is ludicrous. But I don't blame Reagan....

In fact, I think it's ridiculous to blame Reagan for ANYTHING that has taken place since he left office.

In any case this isn't science, it's silliness.

[undeterred]

16. NASA NEEDS BILLIONAIRE DONORS.

That's what I heard.

[hueymahl]

12. More Pseudo-Science horseshit

And this time coming from NASA. Blech.

[paleotn]

17. OK, what's wrong with the study....

...precisely what's pseudo-science? What specifically do you find that's so "blech"?

“Technological change can raise the efficiency of resource use, but it also tends to raise both per capita resource consumption and the scale of resource extraction, so that, absent policy effects, the increases in consumption often compensate for the increased efficiency of resource use.”

I agree. As our level of technology increases, so does or level or resource consumption, at best canceling out and in most cases overwhelming increases in efficiency. Same goes for modern, industrial agriculture......

Productivity increases in agriculture and industry over the last two centuries has come from “increased (rather than decreased) resource throughput,” despite dramatic efficiency gains over the same period.

Today, we are in essence eating oil. Yields per acre for nearly all commodity food crops are many times what they were in the early 20th century, particularly in industrialized nations. But the resources necessary to grow these crops (water, fertilizer, fuel for modern farming equipment) has grown even faster. Regardless of advances in plant science, if the resources necessary to grow these crops are harder to come by, total yields will at best plateau and most likely decline.

Now, superimpose a growing global population and we're in for some real problems. In the history of our species, more than a few rather nasty wars have been fought over resources in and around food production. The prevalence off nukes will only make those wars more ghastly.

Due to our lifestyles in the west, we are huge per capita resource hogs. 1.4 billion Chinese and 1.3 billion Indians want to live just like us, and we can't stop them. The planet can't sustain our resource exploitation, much less a few billion more. It really boils down to an exercise in math and human nature. Humans won't limit their exploitation of the planet's resources. Those resources are limited. Humans have always tended to kill each other over resources, particularly those that are scarce. Thus, we're fucked. No, we won't change our ways because this cushy western lifestyle we love so much is just too damn comfortable and we can 't invent our way out of this mess. Looks like history is rhyming once again.

[hueymahl]

19. These types of arguments predicting the end of food resources have been going on for centuries

I don't have the interest or time to do a point-by-point refutation of the flawed logic, but it basically boils down to this:

People have been predicting the "end of [fill-in-the-blank]" for as long as modern society existed. In the 1880's New York was destined to become uninhabitable from the quantities of horse manure deposited there if population increased. In the 1930's, large swaths of the midwest were deemed "ruined". In the 1970s the "poplulation bomb" theorized that we had already reached the maximum number of people we could feed on this planet. In the 1990s we had repeated scares about "peak oil".

All have proven overblown. And why? The fear-mongers failed to account for increases in technology. They essentially did a static analysis based on technology that existed during that time or that they could imagine. Sadly, this is exactly the same mistake NASA makes in their pitiful report. NASA of all institutions.

I don't know what technological achievements will come, no more than 1880 politicians could predict air travel. But they will come. On the food front, advances in genetic understanding will likely be a huge one. On energy, fracking (for all its problems) has pushed out peak carbon energy by decades. Solar and clean tech will take up the slack. Health care continues its torrid advances. And universal education will ultimately slow or stop population growth. It has in every advanced society and will continue to do so around the world as modernity reaches the backwaters of the world.

Will everything be rosy in the future? Of course not. Wars, famine, extinction, they will all take their toll. But the end of civilization? Not for the reasons set forth by NASA. Nuclear destruction is really the only thing we need to fear from a macro sense. Even global warming can be managed (though not at great human and environmental cost).

So while the paper hits on some progressive hot topics, it has about as much scientific validity as a typical B-movie disaster flick.

[paleotn]

20. No one's predicting the END of food resources....

....not now and not in the past. No ones predicting the "end of the world" either, just the distinct possibility of the end of the world as we know it in our cushy, modern, industrial lives, particularly for our children and grand children. What the authors are saying is severe reductions in food production, among other things, caused by resource over-exploitation could bring on a socio-economic disaster, ending modern industrial civilization as we know it today. Eliminating it? Not hardly. Just changing it to one that we may not be comfortable living in.

OK, what about that has no scientific validity? It's certainly happened quite often in the past, and by civilizations just as smug and arrogant as ours, if that's possible. The problem isn't a lack of scientific rigor in the author's work, it's that you've grossly misinterpreted what the authors are getting at. Thinking modern agri-science is simply going to magically invent food crops that can produce current or better yields (remember there's more of use every day) on a fraction of the resources currently used per acre is not only unsound, it's grossly pollyannaish. Not only is global population growth and affluence outstripping our ability to come up with new breakthroughs in plant science , we're grossly over-exploiting all the other resources necessary for basic food production. Sorry if it offends you, but something will have to give.

So, modernity will reach the backwaters of the world you say, while the planet can't sustain OUR modernity. OK, as you wrote we'll just invent our way out of this so you don't have to worry one damn thing or do anything particularly constructive in this regard, because you've got to have your i-phone and everything else connected to your cushy, secure, fat and happy life! Planet be damned! Frack away!

[daleanime]

28. Madding isn't?

[hueymahl]

32. A pseudo-science piece distributed under the NASA brand

is indeed maddening. I agree!!

[daleanime]

34. And damn the consequences....

[truebluegreen]

35. Check this out:

http://www.upworthy.com/a-smartypants-scientist-makes-an-easy-analogy-about-our-planet-and-now-im-scared

[hueymahl]

43. Thanks. That was entertaining.

But it is a flawed analogy. Bacteria can't slow their growth rate. Humans can and repeatedly, historically do. Every "first world" country (I kind of hate that term, but it is useful shorthand) has reached zero population growth or is very close to it. Japan has a population decline problem. The only reason the US is still growing at its current rate is due to immigration, and the larger families that first-gen immigrants tend to have. Second and third generation immigrants revert back to zero or slightly negative population growth. This pattern is repeated throughout the western world.

Overpopulation is a problem, but it is one that solves itself as societies advance. The challenge is getting them wealthy enough and educated enough fast enough for this natural limiting process to take place.

One of the areas of the NASA paper I strongly agree with is the issue of wealth distribution. That has to be addressed, or you have societal unrest. And that can lead to if not destruction of civilization, to damage, destruction and death.

[Adam051188]

14. a little hyperbolic but a good scare might be what is needed to send science in the right direction.

a mass-producible replacement for oil is needed in the next 25 years. no ifs ands or buts about it. everything hinges on this one development.

[AverageJoe90]

18. Unfortunately, that hasn't really worked so far.....just look at inaction on AGW for instance.

It's become clear, to me at least, that scaring people over and over again with hyperbolic headlines & articles with little actual substance to them("it's worse than we thought! worse than we thought!&quot , has done little to motivate the public at large.

[truebluegreen]

31. Hyperbole is not generally a characteristic of scientists. Just sayin'. nt

[librechik]

22. If you read the article, it's not natural catastrophes or starvation that ends us, repeatedly

It's failure to control the overconsumption of the Elites. Every time. There are always resources, and they get them and everybody else dies. Over and over.

[bemildred]

27. +1. nt

[africanadian]

25. Death to the cell phone!

[Berlum]

33. "Tuff noogies for you smelly American proles. Sneer." - Republicon Eeleetes (1%)

[BlancheSplanchnik]

49. that's a great toon.